


A Respectable Education in Magic

by lateralus112358



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lateralus112358/pseuds/lateralus112358
Summary: Hogwarts attempts to survive two of its students.
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw, Root/Shaw
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please remember to vote, my American friends. Check out betterknowaballot.com to see how to vote in your state. PSA concluded.

_“There’s bravery here, to be sure. But ambition as well. Perhaps too much. Oh, and not an overabundance of humility either, I see. Looks like you’ll be SLYTHERIN!!”_

This final word booms out across the Great Hall, over the heads of flinching first-years still standing and shuffling anxiously, awaiting their turn to wear the ragged hat that’s removed from Root’s head as she hops down from the stool, and makes her way to the long dining table that seats her new Housemates. She squeezes in between a fifth or sixth year girl who hasn’t looked up from her food since the Sorting began, and a first-year boy who had been Sorted a few minutes before her. He glances nervously toward her, and she gives him a level look that she thinks appears comfortable and confident, which apparently it does because he seems reassured as he turns his attention back to the ongoing Sorting. So does Root, although she’s mostly looking at the hat. She’s a bit annoyed at how it talked about her. Someone should steal it. Or set it on fire.

Maybe both.

For the rest of the ceremony, she only takes note of people who are Sorted to her House. If others mattered, they would have been where she was. Slytherin is her House, therefore it is the best House. She would think this no matter which House she had been Sorted into, a fact she is vaguely aware of, but which does not bother her in the slightest. 

While the rest of Slytherin turn their full attentions to the feast arrayed before them, Root looks up and down the long table, surveying her House. She’s never been much good at making friends before, but since she is simultaneously brilliant, funny, and possessed of a winning personality, the failure must have been with the people she had previously been surrounded with. Her fellow Slytherins are surely cut from a finer cloth. She also marks some of those in her mental survey as potential girlfriends, including a few clearly several years ahead of her, because she’s never shied away from ambition.

Satisfied, she at last takes in the food before her, and finds it similarly satisfactory.

***

Buildings have personalities. The home Root had grown up in was indifferent; vaulted ceilings and steel-framed windows set into brick walls, wide hallways and foyers decorated lavishly with rugs and vases and paintings so immaculately placed that the rooms looked like paintings themselves. But it was a cold feeling, like persisting eternally in an undisturbed state was its strongest desire, and any interlopers were not entirely welcome. Like someone who always kept their back to you, the house made its feelings known.

Hogwarts is vast and sprawling and there are lots of empty, open places, but it always feels playful. Like there’s a friend hiding around the next corner. Root’s checked a lot of corners and hasn’t found any friends yet, but the feeling persists so it’s hard to complain too much.

Currently she’s somewhere near the top of a spindly tower, tucked into a little alcove with a large window looking down onto the Quidditch grounds where one of the teams is currently practicing. She’d been in her Charms class, but it wasn’t very interesting, so she’d snuck out, figuring she would just learn from the book on her own later. She’d vaguely wandered back towards the Slytherin common room, but hadn’t felt any real desire to return and had instead gone exploring. She found a strange, inward opening door on a wall that was inclined 30 degrees forward, followed a long passage until it reached several locked doors. She’d broken into all of them and then went through the one that had been the most difficult, assuming that the most interesting stuff would be behind it. Then she’d come to an increasingly tight spiral staircase which she ascended and came finally to her alcove.

She did manage to remove her Charms book from her bag, but it sits forlornly and unread beside her while she watches the team below. She’s never had much interest in the sport, but it looks fun from here.

***

Root’s hair blows crazily around her face as a player on a broomstick whizzes by just a few yards away from her. She’s in the stands on the Quidditch field, as close as she can get without being down on the field itself, which she had tried and was unfortunately caught. She’s obligingly dressed in green and silver; though her Housemates have proven to be something of a disappointment as far as friendship goes, with most interactions beginning and ending with bafflement on the part of either or both of the involved parties, she still feels a sense of loyalty to her House. They’re up by 40 points right now. Root’s attention is on the Slytherin Seeker, who’s begun darting and weaving purposefully as though he’s caught sight of something, although Root can’t spy the tiny golden Snitch herself. One of the Gryffindor Beaters angles towards him, and steers her broomstick momentarily with only her knees as she slams a passing Bludger with a huge two-handed swing of her bat. Slytherin’s Seeker rolls to avoid it as it whizzes past, righting himself quickly to maintain his chase, failing to notice that the Gryffindor Beater had not changed course until she barrels directly into him, nearly knocking both of them from their brooms.

A huge gasp, followed by mostly boos rises up from the Slytherins arrayed around Root in the stands. She forgets about the rest of the players for the remainder of the game and fixes fascinated eyes on the lone Beater. When the game ends (Root doesn’t notice who won) and the players return to the ground, she sees that the Beater’s face is streaked with dried blood, but she waves off the approaching nurse and makes her way off the field herself.

Root, having little experience with any personal relationships and no experience at all with being in love outside of several long-running daydreams, nonetheless decides in that instant that she is in love with this violent, bloody Gryffindor.

***

Most of Root’s classes proceed well, on the occasions she decides to attend them. Her Gryffindor is a second year, so they don’t share any classes, which required a number of weeks of research to learn her schedule and thereby to conduct further reconnaissance. So far, Root has learned:

  * Her name is Sameen Shaw
  * She often does not attend her classes
  * She is good at disappearing when being followed



This is not a great wealth of information by any stretch of her exceptional imagination, but she remains confident that her methods will yield dividends soon. She hasn’t mastered the trick of turning herself invisible (several attempts have only landed her in the hospital wing), but she has learned a neat enchantment to dampen the sound of her feet on the floors of the castle, which will surely prove very useful. 

She’s currently following Sameen down a corridor, or she was, since once she jerks out of her self-congratulatory reverie she realizes that the girl has disappeared again. 

She definitely didn’t hear Root’s feet, though.

***

Root’s sitting on the roof of a section of the castle, right outside her alcove she’d discovered. Winter is approaching and the wind is biting, so she huddles closer into the nest of blankets she’d created on a nearly flat area of the roof. The holidays are in just a week, so she’ll be headed home soon. She’s not looking forward to it.

An idea occurs to her, though. Students aren’t allowed to join a Quidditch team until they’re at least in their second year. But that’s fine, it’ll take her at least until then to get enough practice anyway. Her parents’ house has a few unused broomsticks stored in closets that she can liberate. The holidays suddenly seem more appealing.

“Why aren’t you following me?”

Root turns in surprise to see her dark-haired dream girl (she has tried this phrase out several times in her diary and decided it was pretty bad, but kept using it anyway) standing behind her. “Do you want me to?”

Sameen shrugs. “Just noticed you weren’t.”

It’s true that Root has been slacking on her primary mission lately. Classwork has started to pile up, and with her impending departure from Hogwarts, she just hasn’t felt inspired lately. “Blanket?” Root offers, liberating one from her pile and holding it out.

“No thanks.” Sameen walks away across the roof, not back towards the alcove Root has been using. She must have another route.

***

After returning from the holidays, and in the last few weeks leading up to the end of the school year, Slytherin and Gryffindor are nearly neck-and-neck in the race for the House Cup. Root has taken to causing Gryffindors to commit small infractions while they’re within view of a professor. In her Potions class, while pretending to be paying attention to the lesson, she had prepared a fun little potion that briefly caused a person to lose all sense of inhibition. She then, by dint of some minor (but still impressive) legerdemain had slipped it into a flask of water belonging to a Gryffindor in her Charms class. She barely managed to pay attention in class at all, watching for the Gryffindor begin his performance. Abruptly he stood up, declared the professor a complete idiot, and began to dance on the top of his desk, before collapsing in confusion a few seconds later.

Gryffindor falls behind Slytherin.

At dinner in the Great Hall the next day, a minor explosion occurs at the Slytherin table some way down from Root. She looks up in surprise, since explosions she hasn’t planned are fairly rare occurrences. The source appears to be a group of fourth and fifth years who have a habit of pushing the rules, and several professors descend on them almost immediately and begin utilizing the haranguement skills that had earned them the job in the first place. The students mostly just look surprised to Root, who has a great deal of experience in recognizing innocence after many hours in front of a mirror practicing concealing her own lack thereof. She turns around and looks across the Hall to the Gryffindor table. Sameen is looking straight her, and holds her gaze for several moments before turning back to her food.

The escalation is predictable and unavoidable by any means either girl is aware of. A group of Gryffindors find themselves in the possession of several items stolen from the headmaster’s office, baffled as to how they had ended up in their bags. A portion of the Quidditch field is set ablaze when only the Slytherin students are within its proximity. Heirlooms of one House, kept in their common room, suddenly disappear and reappear in the opposing House’s quarters. The hospital wing begins to fill with the detritus of this psychological war.

At some point their ever more dramatic acts of wanton destruction cease attempting to implicate the opposing House at all; the contenders match their gambits against each other directly in increasingly complex schemes that serve only to impress the opponent. One morning, the entire Great Hall floor is covered in ice. An entire staircase within the castle is simply not there. Corridors are flooded, stone walls bear marks of char, half the student body takes to casting full body protection spells when wandering in Hogwarts, now the domain of the unnamed ghouls who have converted it into a battle zone.

Inevitably, their ambition outstrips their ability to evade capture, and, found amidst an ongoing engagement (Root, several cleverly folded pieces of paper forming simulacra soldiers, animated through magic, whirling around her while the rest of the horde charges down a corridor, met by a stream of fire emitted from Sameen’s outstretched wand), they are hauled somewhat painfully before a panel of professors who try to determine how to punish them.

Sameen glares sullenly the entire time, as if this was Root’s fault and she hadn’t been enjoying herself just as much as Root. Eventually, their judges decide on a _very_ long period of detention. There’s no sense in beginning so close to the end of the term, just a few days away, and they are told that for the entire following year, several hours of each school night will be spent in this way. Together, so they can learn to get along with each other.

This is the best thing that has ever happened to Root.


	2. Chapter 2

Root’s second year at the magical school of Hogwarts begins somewhat inauspiciously. On the night of the Sorting, she pays zero attention to the ceremonies and instead devotes her sole focus to an intense stare across the Great Hall towards Sameen, who never turns around and shows no sign that she is aware of Root’s twin augurs boring into her soul. The dinner following was as impressive as expected, but she gives it little notice since her brutal campaign of psychological warfare requires her to turn almost completely around on her bench, which made eating most anything more trouble than it was worth.

Several of her Housemates attempt to engage her in conversation, since earning a year-long detention and vandalizing large portions of the castle is a fairly impressive resumé for a second year student, but despite being clearly deserving of the respect and adoration of her peers, Root finds herself strangely indifferent to it. 

After the meal, she trudges listlessly out of the Great Hall while she knows she’s within eyeshot of Sameen, and afterwards steps rather more spryly the rest of the way to the Slytherin common room. The winding corridors and shifting staircases of the castle seem as friendly as ever, which is encouraging after a summer spent in a largely unfriendly place.

***

In Root’s imagination, detention at Hogwarts involved students being sent on dangerous missions, usually in the night, against some nefarious magical forces. Generally these sorts of imaginings also feature violence, subterfuge, and romance, and after that her thoughts tend to wander away from the original idea. In reality though, as she discovers after her first day of classes, detention primarily consists of sitting at one end of an empty classroom, while a bored professor works at her desk at the other end, occasionally glancing up to make sure her charges aren’t having any fun. Sameen is there also, and while the probability of violence from her remains high, she doesn’t seem inclined to subterfuge, and romance appears tragically out of reach. Mostly she just glares at Root and refuses to talk to her. It’s very disappointing. Root had spent a lot of her summer imagining the exciting adventures they would get up to when the term began.

But Root is not a wallower. When she encounters a problem, she dissects it, discovers what makes it work, and then studiously takes it apart. So after an appropriate amount of time spent making her best ‘please don’t be mad at me’ face at an immovable Sameen, she pulls out her quill and parchment and starts on a plan.

***

There are a number of reasons why Root earns the position of Seeker on the Slytherin Quidditch team when tryouts are held later in the week. One is that she had spent a good portion of her holiday training herself on a broomstick that had been lying unused around the family home for ages. Another is that in Slytherin House, social status is almost as important as skill, sometimes more so. Root’s family is generically and unobtrusively wealthy, but the antics of her first year have made her somewhat notorious among her House. And finally, for reasons no is quite able to explain, none of the other contenders for the Seeker position seem to be able to make it far enough from the hospital wing to participate in the tryouts. An unfortunate, coincidental set of circumstances, to be sure, but to the great relief of all, Root is there.

Of course all of this would be meaningless if she flew poorly. As it turns out, however, she comports herself admirably and by the end of the afternoon, Slytherin has found its new Seeker.

Root’s exploits of the day do not end as she leaves the Quidditch field, however. In a classroom filled with variously-colored steams and smokes mixing noxious scents in unpleasant ways, she pretends to follow along with the Potions lecture, while surreptitiously following a separate recipe, lifted from a withered and defeated-looking book she’d discovered in the library the previous year. She’d copied down the pages at the time, and had slipped her replicas into her own Potions book. The deception was probably unnecessary; students are not prohibited from reading library books, after all, but still. Extra secrets never hurt anyone. Or at the very least, they’d never hurt Root, which was her primary area of concern.

She produces several small vials and fills them with her concoction, returning them to her robes when the attention of the class is elsewhere. Which is often. Her peers are singularly unimpressive.

***

“You can’t just ignore me forever, Sameen.”

Shaw does her best to prove this prophecy wrong by continuing to stare straight ahead, which has been her new tactic since her angry looks failed to cause Root to dematerialize.

“Besides, you were having fun too.” Root says, unworried about being overheard by their erstwhile jailor, since the professor had both given up on curbing Root’s constant monologue and had cast a spell of silence around herself so that she could actually get some of her work done. 

Shaw is unmoved by this as well. Her defiance of Root is actually forcing her to go against her own inclinations, since Root knows she’d rather tear something apart than sit meekly and accept her punishment. Her will is worthy of being lauded, even though it’s problematic to Root’s machinations at the moment.

“Well,” Root says, turning away and leaning back in her chair. “I guess I won’t take you with me when I get out of here early tonight.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a muscle in Shaw’s jaw twitch. She turns with a strange, jerky motion, as if half of her is resisting the action. “What?” She asks flatly.

“I’m just saying. I would help my friends get out of detention. But if you don’t want to be friends…” Root trails off and shrugs.

Shaw narrows her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“OK.”

After a few minutes of silence, Shaw asks, “How would you do it?”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone but my friends either.”

“Fine!” Shaw bursts out. “We’re friends! Are you happy now?”

“Yes,” Root replies. “I’m just going to wait for her to fall asleep.” She nods at the professor, mired in papers at her desk.

“Great plan.” Shaw says.

Root, for once, stays silent for several minutes, until she sees the professor’s head loll forward onto her scattered papers. She turns to Shaw. “So, where do you want to go?”

***

Root guesses they have a little over an hour before they need to return, so Shaw’s initial idea of sneaking out to the Forbidden Forest to look for monsters has to be postponed for another time. They wander down torchlit corridors, choosing the paths that look the most sinister and seeing where they take them. There’s a stone wall that sounds strangely hollow when they knock against it, and for a while they take turns casting spells attempting to blast through, but eventually have to admit defeat with little more than mildly scorched robes to show for their efforts.

“See, this is fun, isn’t it?” Root says. They’re in a strange corridor that’s rotating slowly, so every few minutes they have to hop down from what is becoming a wall onto what will soon be the floor. One time Root stays too long at the wrong end, thinking that she’ll tumble down into a heroic catch from Sameen, but instead she just hits the floor painfully while Shaw frowns at her.

“Better than detention, I guess.” Shaw replies. “Are you going to tell me how you did it?”

“No,” Root says. “Then you’d know how to do it yourself next time.”

“So you’re blackmailing me?”

“Yes.” Root says brightly.

Shaw seems to grudgingly respect this. “We’re playing Slytherin next week.” She says offhandedly, moving one foot off of the old wall to the new floor, balancing between them.

“Are you looking forward to it?” Root’s legs, placed against what used to be a wall, start to take her weight as the corridor orients her into a standing position.

“Looking forward to beating you.”

***

Root skims over the stands, not exerting any special effort towards looking the golden Snitch. She and Sameen are playing a game within the game, where she tries to get close enough that they can talk, but darting away whenever Shaw finds a Bludger to knock towards Root. Root thinks she’s winning this second game so far; even though Shaw’s conversation has been mostly limited to grunts, she hasn’t managed to score a hit yet. Her team is behind in the first game, the less important one, but not so far that they can’t recover. She’s torn between a desire to let Shaw win to make her happy and a different one to completely destroy her and earn her respect.

Out of the corner of her eye she detects a flash of gold and darts off after it. Shaw must have been watching her, because not long after, as she’s swerving to keep the small, winged balls in sight, a Bludger smashes into her side, knocking her off course and nearly unseating her from her broomstick. She re-orients herself, fails to catch sight of the Snitch again, but zooms off purposefully as if she had, keeping Shaw, holding pace across from her, in the corner of her eye. Abruptly she swerves and flies straight at Shaw, whose surprise is clear on her normally unexpressive face, and she fails to dodge out of the way before Root collides with her. Root throws one leg over Shaw’s broomstick to keep them from separating. Shaw swings her Beater’s bat wildly and smashes several of Root’s fingers. Root kicks Shaw’s thigh and tries to grab her bat. 

A harsh whistle sounds, and several moments later both girls find themselves immobilized in the air, being berated by the referee. They’re escorted to the ground, where their chastisement continues, until they’re deemed sufficiently remorseful to resume playing. Root is far more adept than Shaw at fake repentance, but she makes apologies on Sameen’s behalf as well. Shaw holds one hand over her bruised leg while Root cradles her own hand as they mount their brooms to return to the game. 

Shaw turns to Root. “That was pretty fun.”

***

One weekend, the last one before the holidays, they sit in Root’s constructed sanctuary on top of a section of roof, huddled underneath her gathered blankets against the cold. Root takes another strange piece of candy from the pile in front of her. Shaw, as a third year student, is now allowed to go into Hogsmeade village, and she’d purchased and brought back a selection of confections to give to Root. Well, ‘give’ may be a slightly generous description, since really she’d just sort of shoved them in Root’s general direction, but it was a nice gesture anyway.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Root asks.

Shaw shrugs, the motion of her shoulders mostly concealed by the blankets heaped on top of them. “You?”

Root shrugs too. “Same thing.”

“Nice to get away from homework for a while.” Shaw offers, although neither of them are particularly diligent about that obligation.

“I’d rather stay here.” Root replies.

Shaw frowns. Root eats another sweet. Shaw pushes her blankets away and rises to her feet. “Stand up,” she says, gesturing at Root, who looks back quizzically, but does so.

Shaw pulls out her wand, and Root doesn’t hear the words of the spell that blasts her off the roof of the castle, and only has time for a mild sense of surprise before the ground hits her and breaks most of her bones.

***

“Sorry.” Shaw sits on a spindly stool beside Root’s bed in the hospital wing. “I didn’t know they could fix broken bones so fast.”

Root had been told that her recovery would take only a few days, not long enough to delay her departure over the holiday break. “It’s OK,” she replies. “It was sweet of you to try.”

“OK.” Shaw says awkwardly, and then stands up and walks away without saying anything else.

***

“If you tell anyone about this,” Shaw says warningly. “I’ll kill you.”

Their year-long detention had been cut short a few weeks after their return to Hogwarts, as Root and Shaw had begun spending enough of their time talking cordially that their overseers decided they’d learned their lesson. This served to illustrate how poorly the administration comprehended their reasons for causing wanton destruction, but neither one felt inclined to correct any misunderstandings. The end of shared detention could have meant an end to their nighttime excursions, but the next day, Shaw had sat next to Root at the Slytherin table for dinner and asked where she wanted to explore next.

“I won’t tell,” Root promises, making a zipping motion across her lips.

Shaw looks dubious, but produces a thin, shimmery cloak from her bag and tosses it over them. Root jumps up and down, unable to contain her excitement. “Stop it!” Shaw hisses.

Under cover of the invisibility cloak, they make their way into the kitchens and liberate several steaks that Sameen feels make their way to the Great Hall too rarely. They’re frozen, so after locating a promisingly abandoned room somewhere in the lower bowels of the castle, Shaw conjures up a fire and attempts to cook them.

“They’re burnt.” Shaw says with disgust some time later.

“You’ll do better next time,” Root assures her, watching her kick the slabs of meat into the darkened corners of the room. “Now I know how you kept getting away from me,” she says, looking towards the invisibility cloak, folded on the floor. “Guess you won’t be able to do that anymore.”

“Oh yeah?” Shaw challenges.

Root shrugs. “Well, you can try. If you want.”

***

For a period of time, a strange sort of staccato war begins. During the day, Root attempts to track Shaw. She pretends to be a third year student to attend the other girl’s classes, only to lose trace of her when she exits the classroom. She casts to spell to turn her skin gray as a statue to try and blend into the background. She enchants a legion of spiders to spin thin lines of webbing across doorways and corridors so that even a person under an invisibility cloak will leave a trail.

However, in the evenings, by nothing under than mutual unspoken understanding, a truce is called, and the two go off on adventures together. One night in the Forbidden Forest nearly gets them detention again; a groundskeeper passing by misses them only because Shaw’s sensitive hearing catches a crackle of branches and she has time to pull the cloak over herself and Root. On one occasion, Shaw agrees to dance with Root at the top of a castle spire, on the condition that she never mentions it to anyone. It’s unclear who Root would have told, in any case, but neither of them addresses this. They discover a carriage that occasionally brings good to and from Hogsmeade, and stow away beneath it, somewhat painfully and by way of a spell that makes their hands and feet adhesive. Root is even able to make Sameen laugh occasionally, which she regards as one of her greatest personal achievements.

Professors and students alike are unsure if they should feel relieved that the two focus their primary energies on each other, or afraid of what sort of mayhem those energies may bring in their wake when joined.

***

“Will you write to me?” Root asks on the last night of the term, hanging by her legs on the plinth of a statue, her head resting upside-down beside Shaw, sitting right-side up with her back to the plinth.

“…OK.” Shaw replies eventually.


	3. Chapter 3

“Where do you think the train goes?” Root asks, looking out at the green, rolling hills passing by outside their compartment window.

Shaw looks up from the pile of chocolates between them that Root had bought from the trolley. “The castle.” She’s using her Root-this-is-a-dumb-question voice.

“No,” Root turns around. “I mean after that. You don’t think it just stays there for the whole term, do you?”

“Why not?” Shaw selects the biggest chocolate remaining in the pile and unwraps it.

“Seems like a waste,” Root says. “If I had a train I would use it for other stuff.”

Shaw shrugs. “When’s the earliest you’ve gotten detention?”

“Counting the long one last year?”

“No, we got that one at the end of the year before.”

“Oh, end of the first week, then. You?”

“Second day. We can break that record, if you want.”

Root fidgets with excitement. “Do you think they’ll give us detention together again?”

“Maybe,” Shaw says. “If we pretend we still hate each other.”

“Pretend?” Root asks innocently.

“Shut up.”

As the train slows and then halts with a final rumble and hiss of steam, they huddle underneath Shaw’s invisibility cloak while the other students pile out of their compartments and leave the train in a jostling, disorderly fashion. Several older students pull open the door of every compartment to make sure no first years have gotten lost or left behind. After that, the train sits in resolute immobility and silence, apart from the erratic creaks and groans of metal cooling, expanding, and settling. The sky had become moody and overcast near the end of the journey, and now with night’s arrival the view out the window is nearly pure black.

A reasonable period of time passes, and no one else moves on board, and the cloak is stowed away. They wander up and down the train, peering into various compartments. Shaw flicks her wand and casts a hex that turns Root’s skin a pale blue. Root holds up her hands to observe her new coloring with interest, before weaving her own spell that causes Shaw’s shoelaces to believe they need to lace themselves with the opposite shoe. There’s no one outside the train to note the flashes of light from inside, or to hear the gentle plinks of breaking glass hit by a misaimed spell, or to witness the even less dignified kicks and punches that accompany the magical battle.

Some time later, with new bruises and, in Root’s case, a mildly broken nose after impact with a pair of hurled shoes, they resume exploration. The train shows no sign of departing.

“This is boring.” Shaw says.

“Disappointing,” Root agrees. “Waste of a good train.”

“Want to head back? Might still be some food left.”

They drag their luggage off the train, after a few steps towards the path to the castle, the idea to enchant their bags and trunks to float along behind them strikes. After only a few minutes of walking with the floating luggage beside them, an even better idea develops, and momentarily they’re both perched atop magically bound together piles of belongings that zoom off towards the castle of their own volition.

Expecting discovery and recriminations on their arrival, they’re surprised when they’re able to enter the castle unaccosted. The Great Hall is largely abandoned by the time they reach it, save for a few students strewn sparsely around the four long tables. Dinner is still present in abundance, however, so they find seats without particular regard for House. Their luggage is left just outside the Hall.

“Castle security is pathetic,” Shaw says between bites. “We definitely should have gotten caught.”

“Do you want detention?” Root asks.

“No,” Shaw frowns. “I don’t know. But we should’ve gotten caught. Why are we being so careful if they’re not even trying to catch us?”

Stormclouds bristle overhead amidst the floating candles, reflecting the weather outside the Hall. After a while a few drops begin to fall pointedly, as if trying to move the students along. 

“I suppose it’s time for bed,” Root says, standing.

“See you tomorrow.” Shaw replies, continuing to eat. Root remains standing for a few moments, looking at Shaw expectantly, but she doesn’t look up. She’s not very good at picking up hints, Root reflects as she leaves the Hall.

***

Root’s third year at Hogwarts begins rather smoothly. Her classes go well, since several of them she had sat through sporadically the previous year, pretending to be one of Shaw’s classmates. She takes a particular interest in Potions, and with Shaw’s help over several nights she acquires a stockpile of ingredients to experiment with on her own. She elects not to rejoin the Slytherin Quidditch team, having found her interest in the sport to be transient, and considering watching Shaw play to be more fun anyway.

She makes acquaintances, if not friends, with her fellow Slytherins. No longer having any expectations of them, she finds their company enjoyable enough at times, especially the first years, who believe anything she tells them. She knows this because she has tested it by feeding them increasingly ridiculous claims that they continue to accept as fact. Her sociability also makes Shaw jealous, which would have made the entire endeavor worthwhile even if it was miserable otherwise.

“Where’s your fan club?” Shaw asks, as Root sits down beside her beneath a large, generally friendly tree on the castle grounds. The day is mildly warm and quite breezy. Root’s hair blows across her face, and she pushes it back and casts a small spell to hold it in place.

“Jealousy isn’t pretty, Sameen,” Root says, despite the evidence sitting right next to her. She leans her back against the trunk of the tree. “Do you want a fan club?”

“Aren’t you my fan club?”

“Yeah,” Root leans forward and pokes Shaw in the shoulder. “So do you like your fan club?”

Shaw turns around with a look half of exasperation and half not. “My fan club’s all right.”

***

As a third year student, Root is allowed to go into the village of Hogsmeade, and she does so on the first available weekend. Shaw has mentally mapped the entire area according to the quality of food in each establishment, and acts as a (mildly surly, which is her normal disposition) guide. Root talks their way into a bar they definitely aren’t old enough to be allowed into, although when the interior reveals no violence or blatant acts of criminality, they leave, feeling somewhat shortchanged.

“Why do you think you got put in Gryffindor?” Root asks as they ride the horseless carriages back to the castle.

“Don’t know. Probably because there was an empty seat.”

“So not for heroism, or bravery?” Root presses, lightly mocking.

“I think the Hat’s just an asshole.”

“I didn’t like it much either,” Root says, leaning over conspiratorially, even though they’re the only ones in their carriage. “Slytherin’s mainly about having the right parents, anyway.”

“Too bad my parents weren’t right,” Shaw says, surprisingly caustically. She kicks the side of the carriage. “Not good enough to get me into Slytherin so I guess I’ll just live with Gryffindor.”

Root frowns. “I don’t have any problem with Gryffindor,” she says, with a bit of an edge.

“Gracious of you.” Shaw snaps back.

Root huffs out an annoyed breath. They don’t talk for the rest of the trip back.

***

Root sits at the Slytherin table for dinner, and Shaw doesn’t join her. Root doesn’t go over to the Gryffindor table either, because she’s not going to be the first one to blink. It’s not her fault Shaw’s so sensitive. Besides, she’ll be just fine on her own.

She spends the next few weeks diligently paying attention in her classes, working through her homework in the library, and angrily brewing potions in her free time, down in the hidden room in the dungeons she’d found. The angrily brewed potions are angry themselves, or so she concludes after the third one explodes on her. Some of the ingredients stain her robes in ways that turn out to be impossible to fully remove, so she ends up just setting that set on fire. Can’t go to classes with robes smelling of illicitly brewed potions. 

Her gaggle of first years follow her around relentlessly at first, plying her with questions. Eventually she snaps at them enough times that they scamper off. She wanders out of the Slytherin common room at night, casting unpleasant hexes on statues and walls that she takes a disliking to. 

Once she finishes being angry at Shaw for being angry at her, she’s mostly just sad. She hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings.

On one of her nighttime walks, she walks up to the wall of portraits that sit outside the entrance to Gryffindor’s common room. “Hello,” she says to the residents of the portraits. “I’m going to do some vandalism here, so you might want to move away.”

Some time later, the words ‘I’M SORRY’ are scorched in gigantic letters across the walls and portraits. The edges of the letters flicker with silent flame.

Very nicely done, Root thinks.

***

A large cauldron sits near the edge of the chamber, bubbling away with a fire underneath. Beakers of fluid lift themselves up without apparent support and empty their contents into the cauldron. Small bundles of herbs do likewise. Hisses, crackles, and occasional spurts of fluid emit from it. Root sits on the floor at the other side of the room, directing her ingredients to combine themselves from a safe distance. She can’t afford to keeping burning ruined robes.

The door opens, and a few moments later, Shaw sits down beside her. 

“They still haven’t figured out how to fix the wall,” she says eventually.

“It looks nicer now, anyway.” Root says.

Shaw looks over at her, and then towards the still-bubbling cauldron. “I just don’t like people talking about my family.”

Root nods. “I don’t really like my family.”

“Sorry.”

The potion begins to spill over the edges of the cauldron, hissing loudly and emitting pungent steam as it makes contact with the floor.

“Is that dangerous?” Shaw asks, gesturing with one foot at the fluid now seeping across the room towards them.

“Probably,” Root says, looking at it with interest. “I’m not really sure what it does.”

They both throw up Shield charms, just as the cauldron explodes, spraying acidic potion and bits of metal around the room. They duck out of the room and pulled the door shut behind them, leaving the contents to cool down a bit on their own.

“Did you write down the recipe?” Shaw asks.

***

Shaw elects to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas, claiming that she needs to focus on her studies, which is blatantly untrue (insofar as she has no intention of doing so, at least), but allows Root to do the same without being entirely by herself in the castle for several weeks. In return, when classes resume, Root makes an ostentatious show of supporting the Gryffindor Quidditch team when they play Slytherin.

Some observers recognize the pattern, and begin to lay low.

The game of escalating generosity mutates into competitive destruction. By the end, though neither could explain exactly how rerouting a section of the plumbing to carry a strangely explosive potion instead of water or burning several thousand effigies of a disliked teacher on the Quidditch field represented a gesture of affection, both were certain that they did.

Shaw’s sitting outside the entrance to Slytherin’s common room when Root flounces herself down beside her. “Detention,” she says. “All next year.”

Shaw nods. “Same here. Separate this time. Guess they don’t believe we still hate each other.”

“Maybe you should try kissing me,” Root suggests.

Shaw twists her mouth and scrunches her eyebrows together. “You think that’ll convince them?”

“Well, we won’t know for sure unless we try.”

Shaw rolls her eyes. “Smooth.”

***

“I’m not convinced it stayed here the whole time,” Shaw says as the line of students weighed down with luggage slowly boards the Hogwarts Express.

Root shrugs. “There’s always next year.”


End file.
